Naruto: Dreaming of Sunshine

Nothing great is lightly won, nothing won is lost. Every good deed that's nobly done will always repay the cost. ~ Anonymous.

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"Welcome to Round Two of the Hidden Grass Chunin Exams!"

Round Two kicked off with Gaara vs Karui, so of course it started with a bang. There was only one fight at a time today, since there were only half as many matches, and so the match was given the whole arena.

Karui was good. There was no doubt about that. But she was a kenjutsu fighter, and therefore in the unenviable position of having to try and take on a Jinchuriki with a sword. Or having to try and take on an AOE ninjutsu user with a sword, if that was a better description. Things weren't in her favour from the very start.

Even using lightning jutsu didn't help much, because Gaara was able to create lightning rods by – I assumed – changing the particulate make up of his sand. Clever. Then again, he'd had practice fighting lightning users during the Gelel Invasion, if I remembered rightly.

Though there were some interesting moments to the fight, I doubted I was the only one totally unsurprised when Gaara won.

The next fight was Temari vs Neji, which was more interesting to me because it wasn't a total given who would win.

Temari opened the scene with some wide sweeping wind blasts and kept her distance. She even pulled out that 'flying on her fan' trick that I remembered from the last exams.

Neji, conversely, reminded us that he was fast and could dodge and deflect with the best of them. And, oh yeah, his Jyuuken now came equipped with distance attacks. That was a serious improvement.

I could see Temari reassess the situation as she touched back down on the ground. "Wind Release," she growled. "Great Task of the Dragon."

The sky went dark and wind howled and she dropped a tornado straight down on Neji. It rattled us, even up in the stands, lashing twists of cold air pulling at my clothes and hair, stinging my skin. It was probably worse, the further down you were. Probably horrific, right in the middle.

Neji did what he could and spun into Kaiten.

I tracked his chakra, so I wasn't surprised when the wind cleared and he was no longer there.

Temari did the obvious and checked down. It was the logical place to escape an attack from the air.

So naturally, Neji dropped down on her from above, having gone airborne off some combination of Kaiten and her attack. It was almost a fair imitation of the Tunneling Fang, really, though no doubt both clans would be annoyed if I made the comparison.

Temari swung her Tessen shut, using the cold steel as a last ditch weapon to keep him at distance. But she was well within the range of his divination now.

"You're up next," Ino whispered to me. As if I could forget.

"Wish me luck," I said. But I was feeling pretty confident. If this guy was a genjutsu user, then I was in no trouble, no matter how good his odds.

Muku was a Grass shinobi, and a few years older than me. He had dark hair, held back in a ponytail, and pale, aristocratic features. I didn't recall seeing him at our Chunin Exams, even though there had been Hidden Grass there. Either he hadn't been ready, they'd wanted to hold him back for this exam to fight on his home ground, or there had been other reasons for not sending him.

Impossible to determine without more information.

I bowed to him, because it was polite. He bowed back, the same kind of shallow, don't-take-your-eyes-off-your-opponent move.

"Go," said the referee.

I lead with a Shadow Jutsu going straight for him, because it was easy and obvious and exactly what I'd used in the last fight. A feint. An opening move.

Muku raced through a set of hand seals but let it connect.

I had a second of crushing disappointment. This fight was just going to be the same as the last.

Muku finished his handseals and let it connect and-

Oh. That was not genjutsu. That was not genjutsu at all. Hinata had been wrong.

"Sealing Style: Fire Release," Muku commanded, triumphant, "One Person Prison!"

The seals slithered down my shadow, they wrapped around my chest and arms like burning iron bands. They were like a living thing, tracking my chakra back to its source and strangling it.

My jutsu cut out.

All my chakra cut out. It was there, still, but I couldn't touch it, like my veins were made of glass. I reached and I pulled and nothing came.

I trembled, muscles loose but mind suddenly, gloriously sharp.

I had no chakra. I had no chakra and I was in the middle of a fight.

Well, then.

I dropped to one knee, folding over and planting my palms on the ground, watching Muku from beneath the cover of my bangs. Some kind of paralyzing genjutsu, Hinata had said. His opponent passed out. She had seen and deduced and had been wrong about why, but nevertheless it told me how it looked. How a person would react, normally, to being so suddenly cut off from their chakra.

"You-" I rasped, with a loud and obvious inhale. Like distress. Like bait.

Muku stepped closer, confident in his jutsu, confident I was no longer a threat. "Still awake? You should surrender then. You won't be able to use chakra until I release the seal. There's nothing you can do."

He stopped. I judged the distance.

It would have to do.

I exploded off the ground, hands pivoting and leg lashing out in a sweep kick. He was off guard, clearly, not expecting anything from me and certainly not an attack.

I kept going, using the momentum to keep moving, my other leg following around to slam a back kick into his face, hands pushing against the ground for more force.

He tumbled away, but regained himself, rolling to his feet.

Shit. Element of surprise gone.

I whirled kunai out of my pouch, a set thrown at him and a pair in my hands. I chased him, but he was ready this time, not off guard, not surprised. He blocked the opening blow, twisted inside my guard and locked down around my arm.

I twisted back, tried to pull away but was too slow.

There was a snap.

A snap and white, blinding pain.

Pain and no chakra to muffle it. A choked sound died in my throat. My kunai tumbled from my fingers.

He hesitated, grip loosening for a second, clearly not having intended actual injury. No chakra didn't just mean I wasn't as strong or fast – it meant I also wasn't as resilient. That move hadn't been intended to damage.

I reversed the grip I had on the other kunai, swinging an awkward backhand strike into him. He blocked that too, changing his stance and throwing me off over his hip. It was a gentle move, comparatively, disengaging more than attacking.

I hit the ground – pain – and rolled – more pain – to hand and knees. My arm was broken, I didn't doubt it. My hand was nearly numb. It would be close to useless.

So taijutsu wasn't working. I needed something else. Another method. Another avenue of attack. Something to distract him, at the very least.

Damn. If I could use seals –

But why not? I couldn't activate them, because I couldn't use chakra. But I still had blood. And blood was still a conductor of chakra, regardless of whether I could use it or not right now.

I dropped my head down, like my arm had given way, creating a tiny space beneath myself where I could work, if I worked fast.

I pulled a pair of exploding tags from my pouch, haphazardly dropping them beneath me, and nicked a thumb on my kunai. The blood I used to make a trigger seal on them, a spiral to gather chakra from the air, until it reached a certain limit and would set off whatever it was attached to.

Then I bent my wrist and smeared the blood along my forearm, disrupting the lines of the resistance seals that I could no longer dismiss. They had safety systems built into them, overrides, and simply vanished when they could no longer function.

I felt lighter. Freer. Still no chakra, but it was another trick, another step up that he wouldn't be expecting.

I raised my head.

"Are you prepared to surrender?" Muku said, standing further back now. He was wary, but not wary enough.

I smiled, teeth flashing. My blood was burning in my veins, heat and glass. "No."

And once more, I pushed off the ground, scooping up my tags as I went, blurring across the grass faster than before.

He was ready, this time, but I was counting on that, feinting and pulling back, a kick he moved to avoid, a punch that sailed harmlessly through the air. Tags that I slapped onto his shirt and then pulled free, retreating to a safer distance.

They didn't go off. Shit. That was the problem with inventing seals on the fly. I had a theoretical estimate of how long it would take to reach the activation limit, but it was theoretical.

He plucked them off and threw them aside. They fluttered, slowly, in the wind. "Exploding tags? You can't even-"

They went off. First one, then the other in a chain reaction. Not quite at ground zero, but close enough.

Three second margin of error. That's terrible.

I launched into the smoke. Muku was staggering, not undamaged now either. I slammed a foot into his stomach, tried to follow it up with a knee to the chin, going straight for the brutal, frontal assault.

He recovered, grabbing at my leg, hooking an arm around my ankle so it never landed. I used it, pushing myself off my pinned foot and forward, onto him, hooking them together around him and trapping his arms to his sides.

He threw himself to the ground, weight bearing down and crushing me. We twisted and grabbled. I tried to stab him with a kunai, barely breathing through the pain jostling through my broken arm. He got a hand free, caught mine with it.

Stalemate.

We rolled across the ground. He threw his head back, nearly head-butting me in the nose. I barely avoided it, head low and pressed against his.

I wasn't going to last. Couldn't keep this up. He'd recover and I wouldn't. My window of opportunity was closing, burning up like a magnesium flare.

I had to do something.

Something soft smacked me in the face, my own hair flapping around as we wrestled, braid a liability in close quarters combat. It was looped forward, around him.

I wasn't thinking. Only reacting. There was no time to consider actions, only to do them. I bit it, grabbing it in my teeth and leaning back.

I wasn't the type of person that braided ninja wire or makiboshi into my hair, in case someone grabbed it. In normal circumstances, if someone was that close, they were surrendering themselves to my shadow jutsu. But it was still rope like, still strong, still anchored firmly to my head. In the right conditions, still dangerous.

It pulled tight across his throat.

Now we were in a different game. Instead of him trying to keep my hand away, I was keeping his, straining and burning to keep it extended instead of retaliating. My legs were locked tight around his chest. I was no longer just an annoyance – I was a danger.

He went still.

I wasn't fooled. His chakra gave him away. I held on, pulling back further. The base of my skull throbbed, hair not meant to be used this way.

When it became clear the ruse wasn't working, he struggled again. But I was so close now. So goddamn close. I wasn't going to lose. And he was weakening. He couldn't breathe. He would be panicking. It wouldn't be long now.

It wasn't.

He went limp again, this time for real. His chakra jolted and went passive. The seals faded off my skin, burning away, and my chakra was mine again.

I let go. Rolled off of him. Staggered to my feet. I pulled medical chakra to my working hand, pressed it to my broken arm and numbed the area. Oblique compound fracture of the humerus. It had pierced the skin during the fight, blood leaking down my arm. The surrounding tissue was swelling and irritated, but it didn't seem like the radial nerve was damaged. That was good.

The referee came over, cautiously. Knelt next to Muku. Nodded.

"The winner is Shikako Nara," he proclaimed.

There was some confused, scattered applause. There were some sounds that weren't-

I shook my head. Oh. They were booing. Right.

A set of medics came onto the field with a stretcher, and took Muku away. I followed them, almost blankly. They checked him over first, which was fair enough because I'd gone after his throat and that could be much more life threatening. Given the method I'd used, even I couldn't be sure whether he'd passed out from lack of air or from compression of the blood vessels in the neck.

I waited for them to finish with him and while I was waiting Sasuke and Neji turned up. Which was an odd pair and totally unexpected but made a little sense because Neji had already fought and Sasuke wasn't on till much later. Who knew how long this would take.

"Ino wanted to come and yell at you," Sasuke said, confirming it. "But she's on against Lee next."

I gave a one shouldered shrug. "It's fine. You didn't have to come."

"Of course we did," Neji said, smoothly. "The Hokage's orders were that no one was to be alone, remember?"

I could hardly argue with that, could I?

"Yes they were," Tsunade-sama said, ducking into the tent and making the other medics squawk with a combination of indignation and awe. I could sympathize with the feeling. "I'm glad someone was paying attention."

Kakashi-sensei ducked in after her, and I gave him a smile because my hands were too occupied to wave. He eye-smiled back at me. "Your grappling is terrible," he informed me. "We need to work on that."

"Not really my usual focus," I agreed and let Tsunade push me up onto an examination bed.

She examined me with chakra, then basically rolled her eyes. She flicked a finger over the stitching at the shoulder of my jacket and it fell apart so that the entire arm slid off.

"Shikako!" Sasuke protested, sounding a cross between annoyed and completely exasperated. "You can't just stand around and have a conversation while your arm bone is sticking out! You have to say something!"

I glanced down at it and felt vaguely queasy. Like, yes, my jutsu had told me what was going on, but seeing it was another matter.

"It's called a humerus," I said because really. 'Arm bone'. And then I really couldn't resist. "But I don't suppose it's that funny."

As puns went, it was weak. But Sasuke did look like he was inches away from smacking someone in the face so… success?

Tsunade snapped a few orders to the medics, fully expecting to be obeyed and a few of them scrambled over, to see her in action. Or to see what people were yelling about. One of them blanched but another wheeled over a cart of supplies, so I supposed they weren't all just gawking.

She manipulated the area with chakra, sliding the bone back beneath the skin where it belonged and sealing it all up. The area was numb and I couldn't feel a thing, and I was perfectly happy with that situation.

"Normally I'd tell you to rest it for a weak on light duty," she said dryly, making me lift and raise it, checking the range of motion and then wrapping a bandage firmly around the place that had been injured, even if there was no longer anything more than a faint mark left. "But somehow I don't think that's a possibility. Just try not to break it again."

"I'll try my best," I agreed, thankful she wasn't going to try enforce the usual. Because 'light duty' and 'fight Gaara' didn't exactly coincide. And I didn't want to forfeit. I'd been… okay no. I hadn't been worried. If no one here had healed it I could have done it myself. But being done by Tsunade was much better than anything I could have done myself, so that was good.

She huffed. "Do try," she said. "But you did a good job out there. The civilians might not have been impressed, but the ninja stood up and took notice."

I tilted my head in confusion, casting a glance at sensei.

He looked up from his book, seeming amused. "There are Jounin in the crowd that wouldn't have wanted to fight that match," he said. "The Kantokusha Clan are the ones that run the Blood Prison – their jutsu is primarily used to restrain serious shinobi criminals."

"Makes sense," I said, because chakra restriction sealing was really useful for prisons. It figured that the best prison would have the best chakra restriction. If I had known that ahead of time… but I hadn't. Because his clan name hadn't been in the betting book. Neither of the Grass ninja had had surnames, and I hadn't even given it a thought.

"Some people were quite confused about how you managed to avoid the seal," Kakashi-sensei continued, slyly, like he was sharing a joke with me.

I stared at him blankly. "Avoid it?" I echoed slowly. "But I … didn't avoid it?" It sounded like a trick question. "I didn't have any chakra and I didn't use any jutsu?"

Kakashi-sensei nodded. Obviously he'd known that. He'd just as obviously wanted me to say it.